The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has met its deadline to answer a host of questions posed by a U.S. Senate committee about the decision to restrict local access to the George Washington Bridge in September.

Port Authority spokesman Chris Valens said the agency provided answers to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation today. The committee's chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), had set a 6 p.m. deadline. Valens declined to provide a copy of the material or answer questions about it, referring reporters to Rockefeller's committee.

A spokesman for the committee, Kevin McAlister, did not respond to a request for comment.

Rockefeller wants to know what oversight the Board of Commissioners of the Port Authority exercised regarding the lane closures, which clogged Fort Lee streets Sept. 9-13, and led to the resignation or firing of at least three officials close to Gov. Chris Christie inside the agency and the governor's office.

Rockefeller wrote in a Dec. 17 letter to Port Authority Chairman David Samson and Vice Chairman Scott Rechler that his committee has oversight authority over the bi-state agency, which was chartered by Congress in 1921, and he was concerned that the closures might have threatened safety and impeded interstate commerce.

Specifically, Rockefeller has asked for details involving: the agency's standard process for conducting lane closures and/or traffic studies, including assessment of their impact and notification of the public and emergency responders; how the two states share information about closures and other operations; what process was followed in this particular case; what prompted the closures and was there ever a traffic study?

Rockefeller also wanted to know who approved Baroni's Nov. 25 testimony to a state Assembly panel asserting the closures were linked to a traffic study; did the board of commissioners review his testimony; and were any concerns raised?

He also asked what the board is doing in response to testimony that staff members complied with closure orders they knew to be highly irregular because they feared for their jobs?

Since Rockefeller's sent his letter, Samson has become the latest high-ranking official embroiled in the lane closure scandal, thanks to last week's release of documents subpoenaed by the Assembly panel that initially investigated the matter.

In an Sept. 18 email exchange with Rechler, which came to light among the subpoenaed documents, Samson, a Christie appointee, accused Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, an appointee of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, of "stirring up trouble" by leaking information to the press about tensions within the agency over the lane closures. Rechler, an appointee of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, defended Foye.

Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, appeared to direct a Christie loyalist at the agency, David Wildstein, to order the closures, in an email exchange on Aug. 13.

In a Sept. 13 email, Foye ordered the closures lifted five days after they began. Foye testified that he was never informed of the closures, or any traffic study they were said to facilitate.

A spokesman for the Port Authority could not immediately say whether the agency had responded to Rockefeller's request for information.

Even before the so-called Bridgegate scandal erupted, there was widespread speculation that Samson, 74, a former state attorney general who led Christie's transition team in 2009 and 2010, had planned to leave the agency well before his six-year term expired.

Today, a column in The New York Times quoted unnamed sources as saying the bridge scandal had made him weigh leaving the agency as soon as this month. Samson told The Times that the story was not true.